1. Fei Chen Research Application Laboratory, NCAR
Overview of the Unified Noah LSM in WRF Recent Enhancement, Test, and Future Plan
Fei Chen
Research Application Laboratory, NCAR
NCEP
Ken Mitchell
Michael Ek
AFWA
John Eylander
Jerry Wegiel
NRL
Teddy Holt
NCAR
Kevin Manning
Mukul Tewari
Jimy Dudhia
Dave Gochis
Peggy LeMone
Universities
Dev Niyogi (Purdue)
Eric Small (CU)
Venkat Laskhmi (USC)
Alexis Lau (HKUST)
Other Institutions
Hiroyuki Kusaka (CREPI, Japan)
Bill Coirier (CFD Res. Corp)
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05

2. 5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05
WRF R&D aims
 Priority for 1-10 km grid applications
Advanced data assimilation and model physics
Portable and efficient on parallel computers
 Well-suited for a broad range of applications
 Community model with direct path to operations
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05

3. 5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05
Development and Implementation of the Community Noah Land Surface Model
Collaborative Noah LSM development effort: NCEP, NCAR, U.S. Air Force Weather Agency, university community
Support WRF mission and community requirements for high-resolution forecast of:
Severe weather (flash flooding)
Air pollution, transport and dispersion of toxic chemicals
Conditions affecting surface and air transportation
Extreme-temperature in the energy/utility industry loading
Agricultural applications (irrigation management, pest control)
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05

4. 5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05
Mission
Integrate advance land models/modules, new data sets, and land data assimilation techniques to improve representation of land and boundary layer processes in WRF
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05

5. Major Milestones in WRF/LSM Efforts
SI include background fields (FY 2001):
30-second global USGS 24-category landuse map
30-second global hybrid (30-sec for CONUS and 5-min elsewhere) top and bottom soil texture
1-deg annual mean air temperature as lower boundary temperature for soil
NESDIS deg monthly 5-year climatology green vegetation fraction
NESDIS deg monthly 5-year climatology albedo
SI Initialize soil moisture, temperature, snow, and sea-ice from AVN and Eta/EDAS (FY 2001)
Implementation of OSULSM (WRF release 1.2 Beta, FY 2001)
Inclusion of OSULSM for idealized WRF cases (available for mass version, FY 2001)
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05

6. Major Milestones in WRF/LSM Efforts
Since 1 Dec. 2001: WRF/OSULSM coupled model has been running in real-time at NCAR
SI add capability to read ARGMET soil fields as initial land state conditions (FY 2002)
Implementation of FSL RUC LSM (FY 2002)
NCEP group delivers the quasi-unified Noah LSM for internal test (FY 2002)
SI add nearest neigh approach for interpolation of external landuse and soil texture, and land state variables (FY 2002)
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05

7. Major Milestones in WRF/LSM Efforts
Implement new surface driver (FY 2003)
Separated from PBL driver
SI add Maximum snow albedo database (FY 2003)
Implement quasi-unified Noah LSM (FY 2003)
Snow and frozen-ground physics
Soil thermal conductivity
Patchy snow cover
Snow density
Soil heat flux treatment under snow pack
Snow roughness length
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05

8. Major Milestones in WRF/LSM Efforts
Implement the unified Noah LSM in WRF 2.0 and set up CVS for Noah support (FY 2004)
Enhance the unified Noah LSM (FY 2004)
Seasonal varying surface emissivity
Simple urban landuse treatment
Apply high-resolution land data assmilation (HRLDAS) to ARW realtime 5-km winter and 4-km summer experiments
Land surface models currently in test (FY 2004)
CLM
Pleim-Xu LSM
Single layer urban canopy model (close to be released)
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05

9. 5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05
Provide documentation for the unified Noah LSM for its offline and coupled application
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05

10. The unified Noah LSM significantly improved the precipitation score
compared to its predecessor OSULSM
Unified Noah LSM
Realtime 22-km CONUS 12Z Cycle initialized from 40-km EDAS
12 day h
forecasted rainfall
from 15 to 31 May 2003 verified on #212 grid
OSULSM
Precip scores available
at NSSL website

11. WRF/Noah Snow Forecast Capability
Snow Storm Case 18 March 2003
24-h snow water equivalent change valid at 06Z 19 March
melt/sublimation
accumulation
WRF/Noah
more realistic snow forecast
Snow melted
too quickly in
the OSULSM
Analysis: 24-h SWE change valid at 06Z 19 March

12. Landuse Based Verification for 15 June 2005
2m Temperature
Wind Speed
RED: Dryland Cropland, Blue: Cropland, Black: Grassland
Green: Shrubland, Yellow: Evergreen Needleleaf Forest
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05

13. High-resolution Land surface and urban modeling and assimilation system
snow
Leaf area index
Vegetation type
Urban type
Vegetation cover
Soil texture
Terrain
Obs. Precipitation
Radiation, T, Q, U, V
High resolution land data assimilation system (HRLDAS)
Soil moisture, soil temperature, snow cover, canopy water, wall/roof/road temperature
Noah land surface model, Urban canopy model
Boundary layer parameterization
Coupled mode

14. HRLDAS Spin-Up 5 < 10 < 5 10 Surface heat flux
RMS difference (Wm-2)
5 <
10 < 5 10
Sensible heat flux
Latent heat flux
The surface heat flux is integration of soil moisture and temperature evolution. It appears that soil temperature has more impact on surface heat fluxes. You can see the fine soil texture has quicker spin up.
Coarse
soil
Medium
soil
Fine
soil

15. Hovmoller Diagrams of Rainfall on 4-km WRF Grid Time: 12Z 9 June - 12Z 21 June 2002 Longitude: from 107 W to 86 W
Continuously cycled soil moisture
Updated daily with HRLDAS soil
Difference (HRLDAS-Cycled)
Both experiments able to simulate propagating convection.
Soil conditions influence timing of location of storm origin.

16. Some solutions: Dynamic modeling of land-surface hydrology with ‘Noah-Router’
(NCAR Tech Note: Gochis and Chen, 2003)
Direct Evaporation
Surface Exfiltration from
Saturated Soil Columns
Re-infiltration
Lateral Flow from
Saturated Soil Layers
2-Dimensional
Diffusive Wave
Overland Flow Routing
Ogden, 1997
Ponded Water Evaporation
and Re-infiltration
Saturated Subsurface Routing
Wigmosta et. al, 1994
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05

17. Terrain and Land-use of the Model Domain with 10-km grid spacing
Sea of Japan
Pacific Ocean
1200km
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05

18. Terrain and Land-use around Tokyo
Tokyo Metropolitan area
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05

19. 2-m Temperature on 1500 LT: Obs and WRF (Case UCM)
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05

20. 2-m Temperature on 0300 LT: Obs and WRF (Case UCM)
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05

21. High-Resolution WRF/Noah/Urban Modeling Capability
Domains: 40.5,13.5,4.5,1.5,0.5 km
Single layer Urban Canopy Model
Complex terrain on WRF nested D-5 (0.5 km grid spacing) over the Slat Lake City area
Complex Urban land use distribution over Salt Lake City

22. WRF-Noah/UCM coupled model forecast
High-Resolution WRF/Noah/Urban Modeling Capability: Coupled to CFD-Urban
WRF-Noah/UCM coupled model forecast
CFD-Urban:
Hi-Res Urban Model
Coupling
Down-Scale
Up- Scale

23. Diurnal Wind Direction at North Downtown
Red: Obs, Green: WRF/Noah, Blue: WRF/Noah/UCM
NIGHT
DAY

24. 5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05
WRF/UCM - CFD Transport and Dispersion Preliminary Results: Urban IOP 10 Urban 2000
Entire IOP 10
3 Releases/Pauses
WRF Data for BC
Quasi-steady approach:
Wind/Turbulence fields at 15 minute intervals
Unsteady T&D using Unified Frozen Hydro Solver
Flow turning is replicated, which causes plume to travel NNW
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05

25. 5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05
WRF/UCM - CFD Transport and Dispersion Preliminary Results: Urban IOP 10 Urban 2000
Urban 2000: Field Test conducted in Salt Lake City
SF6 released in Central Business District
Samplers located in CBD and on “arcs” located downstream
Statistical Comparison of Predicted to Measured Concentration Data
Acceptable values:
FAC2 > 0.5
-0.3 < FB <0.3 (0.7 <MG < 1.3)
NMSE < 4 (VG <1.6)
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05

26. Preliminary Results: IOP 10 Urban 2000
Three sets of calculations:
Raging Waters Input: Use sounding data (single sounding) at all boundary faces
WRF Boundary Conditions: Unsteady Flow, Turbulence and Contaminant
WRF Boundary Conditions: Steady Flow (“Wind Library”)
Quasi-Steady approach appears to be best mode of operation:
Steady-state wind/turbulence fields at set intervals in time using WRF data as boundary conditions
Significantly improve FAC2 (FAC>0.5 acceptable) and MG (0.7<MG<1.3 acceptable)
Unsteady flow/turbulence/transport: Time step restrictions
Too costly for accuracy or inaccurate because timestep too big
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05

27. 5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05
Summary
We have achieved main tasks we set four years ago
Unified Noah LSM modifications currently tested at NCAR
Vary LAI as landuse type and scale it by vegetation fraction
Define all vegetation parameters in VEGPRM.TBL (part of them are now defined in LANDUSE/TBL)
Adjust parameters (emissivity, roughness length, albedo)
Need to incorporate new satellite data
Further changes/improvements brought up at the workshop
Need more systematic evaluation of coupled model (surface heat fluxes, radiation, for instance)
Implement the unified Noah in NMM, AGRMET, COAMPS
5th WRF LSM Workshop, NCAR, 9/13/05